tank went cloudy on me

[mjw_atl1961]

I have a 20 gallon freshwater tank that established back in March. I used a fishless cycle to get it started and introduced the fish to the tank with no problems. I have been doing weekly water changes of about 50%, and the last two times I did this I used a gravel vacu, to remove the water from the tank.

After the last water change my water has gone real cloudy, the snail population went crazy, it has been cloudy now for over 2 weeks and I am not doing anything to it waiting for it to clear.

there are 5 fish in the tank, the longest being 1 1/2" long.

any suggestions would be helpful

 

[Panther28]

Ok If your tank is cycled then. You might be over feeding them which causes a lot of nitrates in the tank. When u did the water change bacteria in the tap water got food (nitrates) Which in return gives you cloudy water. So I think this is your main problem. How many times do you feed them? once is more then enough.

 

[homebunnyj]

Panther, you may be onto something as for as overfeeding due to the observation of the snail population explosion. (However, there are no nitrate-eating bacteria in tap water. I think what you had in mind is when the bacteria colony in the tank multiply when the supply of ammonia is increased; this produces a whitish, milky-looking cloudiness, which goes away on its own.) Some questions to ask are: how much and how often do you feed; how did you determine that your tank was cycled; what is your maintenance procedure regarding filter media? Do you test your water?

 

[Panther28]

HomebunnyJ, Thanks for the correction.

 

[mjw_atl1961]

feeding

I was feeding twice a day. I have not been testing the water since the tank started to cycle. I have not had any problems up intill this happened. I have backed off on feeding and about half my fish have died. So how do i reverse this trend. Also I always treat the water for 24 hours in a 5 gallon bucket with some proaquatics water conditioner before I add it to my tank.

also I ahve not changed my media because everything i have seen sas that a lot of the critical bacteria needed forthe tank is in the media - and the tank has only been setup for 3 months.

thanks again

 

[FroggyFox]

well you really need to figure out why your fish died, test your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate for us and let us know what they are.

If your tank was fully fishless cycled I have a hard time believing that its cycling again...but its possible that it wasn't fully cycled when you started adding fish and now that there is fish in there its actually finishing up the cycle and the high nitrites or nitrates are killing your fish.

Only feeding once a day as much as your fish will eat in a few minutes is a good start...although if your only problem is the tank being cloudy I wouldn't worry about it. Most likely a bacterial bloom that will right itself in a few days to a week. Usually water changes wont help, it'll just make the tank do it more. I'd say unless your ammonia/nitrite level is over .5ppm or your nitrate level is over 20ppm then just stick to say 30% water changes once a week and wait it out. If your tank is cycling then you'll need to do enough water changes to keep the nitrite level down.

 

[mjw_atl1961]

water test

my ph is at 6

all other test, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are at zero

 

[FroggyFox]

hmm...if everything is 0 then thats probably not what killed them. Your pH is pretty low, not that thats bad...but do you know what the pH of your tap water is? I wonder if you had a ph swing, that could have killed them?

Did the snail population slow down at all when you slowed down your feeding?

Is the tank any cloudier or any less cloudy now? Also, I dont think anyone has asked...is it white cloudy or green cloudy?

 

[Methylx]

I had the same problem of cloudiness, it was attritubted to overfeeding and lack of efficient filtration. After I slowed down feeding and introduced a canister filter to supplement my Penguin 400 it cleared up after a few days.